When Aniston Met Perez

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It’s no secret that Perez Hilton regularly reveled in ferocious criticism of Jennifer Aniston (he even gave her the unflattering moniker “Maniston”).

So when the actress was leaving dinner with a friend and came face-to-face with Hilton in a parking garage last August, she quite naturally decided to confront him – and the outcome was surprising.“We stood there like two deer in headlights,” she tells Ellen DeGeneres on her chat show. “And I just said, ‘Come here. Just talk to me for a second.’ It was one of those great moments. It was a lovely meeting and I was just like, ‘Why are you so mean?"

Hilton, real name Mario Lavandeira, announced on DeGeneres’ show in October that he would no longer bully on his website, which has since taken on a softer tone. Aniston’s opinion? “There's something really great about putting a human being in front of another human being and then the reality that those words, even if it's for humor or effect or whatever, there's a human being behind all of that,” she says. “And he's kept it up too which is good.”

For his part, Hilton, who describes the meeting as “a very powerful moment”, admits that he didn’t see her as a human being with feelings at the time he leveled insults at her. “I told her the answer I would always tell myself – at the time, I viewed her as a character,” he tells the Los Angeles Times. “I think it was very cathartic for her and for me.”